Strike to close pub doors to football fans

June 1994

Pub football fans could find themselves waiting a while for a drink to ease those big match nerves during Ireland’s long-awaited World Cup opener against Italy this weekend.

For along with 3,000 colleagues in the greater Dublin area, local barmen were this week set to take strike action in a simmering dispute over pay and conditions.

The vast majority of Bray’s pub proprietors are members of the largely Dublin-based Licensed Vintners Association (LVA), which over recent weeks has been engaged in unsuccessful negotiations with the MANDATE trade union, representing bar staff across the city area, including 52 in Bray.

The dispute is centred around bar staff claims for late night working.

Mandation national officer, and Bray Trade Union Council President, John Douglas, said members were currently only being paid to 12.15 a.m., while work demands regularly required them to continue on for more than an hour afterwards.

Contfirming the strike had been timed to coincide with the big World Cup game, Mr Douglas said last Wednesday that arrangements were being made to place pickets on the pubs and appealed to members of the public to respect them.

‘While we don’t wish to spoil anyone’s enjoyment of the World Cup, the dispute has been going on for a long time and LVA have failed to respond,’ he said.